


Dead to Rights

by tisfan



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Hargreeves is Dead, Buddy Cop AU, Diego has no common sense, F/M, Klaus has no self control, Patch takes Zero Shit, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 14:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18693694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Eudora Patch has a new partner...The Problem? Her old partner is found murdered, her new partner is her ex lover, and her ex lover's brother keeps showing up and talking to dead people.For the Fandom Trumps Hate 2019 event





	Dead to Rights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whistlingwindtree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whistlingwindtree/gifts).



> based on this tumblr prompt; permission granted by OP
> 
> [Here](http://lesbuchanan.tumblr.com/post/183474737499/anyway-do-i-have-to-write-this-klaus-diego-buddy)

Diego Hargreeves’ ears were burning as he escaped from the Captain’s office with his balls barely intact. He’d known it wasn’t going to be easy coming from a rich family, being a vigilante in his youth, barely scraping by from police academy. He was starting with his toe on the line and no one wanted him around, just waiting to screw it up.

Nobody wanted him here, just like nobody wanted him at home. Which was, quite frankly, why he’d left. Let Luther stay home, take care of the old man in his delusions. Allison with her dreams and realities of stardom, Ben the only one he might have been able to understand, who was dead. Five who was missing. Klaus, always stoned out of his mind and looking for his next score. And Vanya. He always forgot about Vanya. She was an afterthought, really. Not important. Not special.

Time to start a new life.

He just hadn’t expected it to feel so much like his old life.

“Detective Patch--” the captain bellowed behind him. “Meet Hargreeves, your new partner.”

Everyone in the bullpen turned around to look and the hush that fell over the room was palpable. Knowing looks were exchanged. If Diego had any idea what they meant, he might have been okay, but he didn’t. There were pursed lips and exaggerated eyebrows.

Detective Patch was tall for a woman, with fierce eyes and hair that curled spectacularly when she didn’t tie it back in a simple, no nonsense tail and went after it viciously with a flat iron. Diego hadn’t seen her for almost two years, and she looked amazing, as always.  “Great. Thanks so much.” Sarcasm dripped from her mouth as she took in Diego’s appearance with an unimpressed sneer.

“Nice to see you, too, Eudora,” Diego said.

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, then turned on her heel and strode off, leaving Diego to flounder around behind her, looking like an idiot.

“Hey, c’mon, Eudora, don’t be like that, it--”

Patch waved him into a conference room imperiously. She shut the door, then turned all the blinds down so no one could peer in at them. That might have been a good sign, Diego thought. She’d done that a few times for hasty make-out sessions on classroom tables.

Not so much this time. “You’re like a bad penny, you always turn up.” She was absently rubbing her lucky rabbit foot keychain. Not so lucky for the rabbit, Diego had always thought, but never said. Patch was ridiculously attached to that thing.

“You used to think I was lucky,” Diego said, sitting on the table. “Really, what’s chewing you up, I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“You were walking a beat two weeks ago down on Cherry Blossom,” Patch said. “With a crappy arrest record and a history of botching it, and now you’ve made detective and you’re my partner.”

“Dad did not p-pay for me to get this promotion,” Diego protested, since that was what the captain had led with, and as far as he knew, it was true. Dad hadn’t paid attention to any of his children -- even if you could call them that, all pretty much purchased outright, not even so much as wanted for themselves as for what they could possibly do -- except Luthor for the last several years.

Diego still went home, from time to time, to see Mom, but that was between him and Mom.

“So why are you here?”

“I got a promotion, Eudora, can’t you be happy for me?”

“Not when it’s at my expense,” she said. Her eyes flickered briefly to his mouth as if wondering if he was going to stutter again -- or maybe not. She’d never been that way about his stutter, even if it was mostly gone by the time he was an adult. But she’d seen him lose his cool a few times in the police academy, and he’d eventually told her the whole story.

“Why would you think that, does the captain know about us?”

“There is no _us_ , Diego,” Patch said. “And yes, of course she knows. They all know, Diego. Everyone knows.”

“Okay, then,” Diego said. “We can work with that--”

“There’s no we, there’s no us. You’ve been assigned as my partner because nobody trusts me,” Patch spat. “You’re _punishment_.”

Diego licked his lip, pushing at the hinge with his tongue. “There was a time when you liked that,” he said, suggestively.

Patch sighed. “My last partner -- he was dirty, Diego. He was taking drugs out of the evidence locker and selling it on the street. You’re my partner because no one else will work with me.”

“Because your partner was dirty?”

“No. Because I turned him in.”

Diego thought about that for a moment. “Fair enough,” he said. He couldn’t blame the other cops; if she would turn a partner in, could they really rely on her. Diego already knew he could rely on her. She might hate his guts, he might be her ex, he might be a vigilante asshole. (All those things were true, there wasn’t any _might be_ about it.)

But she was trustworthy.

If her partner was dirty, it was bad dirty.

“Where is he now?”

“Investigative leave of absence. With pay,” Patch said. “He’s uh, friends with most of those guys.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Diego said. “Look, Eudora--”

“Patch,” she said. “Call me Eudora one more time, Diego, and I’ll break your arm.”

“Right. Let’s just -- sounds like neither of us is ideal or where we wanna be,” he said. “So, let’s try it out and see if you like it. You used to like it.”

“Diego--”

“No, I get it, I’m an asshole, you’re a pariah, I get that, Eud-- er, Detective. Detective. So, let’s detect.”

“Investigate, Diego. The word is investigate.”

Diego just grinned because he knew he’d won. This round, at least.

***

Murder, Diego knew, didn’t always happen at night. It just seemed that way.

Especially when he got kicked awake by Al at three in the morning. “You gotta call,” Al grumbled, and shuffled away, old man legs bowed out, hair on his back sticking out from his dirty tank top. Yeah, the first thing Diego was doing when he got a paycheck was find a new place to live.

Or maybe buy his own cell phone. Getting new digs was probably going to be cheaper.

Diego glanced at his bedside table -- really a couple of milk crates with a piece of cardboard taped to the top of them that served as table and shelves -- and touched his badge for good luck. Grabbed a can of redbull from the second shelf and headed for the phone, which was in the main gym.

The gym was odd and quiet and full of shadows. “Hargreeves speaking,” he said when he picked up the phone.

“Where have you been?” Patch demanded. “I’ve been on hold for ten minutes--”

“Sleeping,” Diego said. “What’s up.”

“We have a case,” she said. “Get your ass over here now.” She gave him the address and hung up.

“Right. We have a case,” Diego said, smiling proudly down at the piece of paper where he’d jotted the address. “We have a case. Our first case.”

He scrambled into his clothes, grabbed his badge, his gun, and another redbull. He maintained his proud, happy mood all the way up to three streets away from the crime scene when his brother sat up in the backseat, yawned, and said, “You don’t happen to have any pills on you, do you, Diego?”

Diego shrieked and almost wrecked the car.

“What the hell are you doing here, Klaus?”

“Your door was open, so I just let myself in,” Klaus said. Diego glanced at him in the rearview mirror. It’d be nicer, he thought, when he had an actual cop car, and Klaus would be behind the prisoner glass. Except he knew damn well he’d never actually arrest Klaus.

Luther, yeah, sure, he’d arrest Luther in a heartbeat, if he thought he had something on the guy, but Klaus was just… Klaus. Helpless and sad and lost, and wasting his life.

“I needed someplace dry to sleep for a while.”

“You could just go home,” Diego suggested. Dad and Luther would look after him. Probably.

“And here I thought you were a smart guy,” Klaus said.

“That’s what you get for thinking.”

“Oh, self-burn, those are rare,” Klaus said. “Look, it’s just for a few days, I’m really tired, I won’t get in the way or anything.”

“Are you clean?”

“Not by choice,” Klaus said.

“As long as you’re clean, you can stay,” Diego said. “I’m a _cop_ , Klaus. I don’t want to have to arrest you.”

“You’re in homicide,” Klaus said. “Not a good choice. But… you’re not a narc. I’m safe as houses with you, brother mine.”

“Well, just stay out of the way. Stay in the car. We can hit a breakfast joint on the way home, if you’re hungry.” Why was he feeding his damn junkie brother? Probably because his damn junkie brother wouldn’t eat if someone didn’t feed him. And much as Diego hated that Klaus fell in a hole and insisted, stubbornly, on staying down there in the wet and the mud, you couldn’t force a man to climb.

“You’re an angel,” Klaus said, but he wasn’t actually looking at Diego, so Diego just nodded as if the comment had been directed at him, and kept going.

There was a perimeter about half a block from the scene, and Diego had fun flashing his badge at people to get out of his way, until he caught up with Patch.

“What have we got?” He glanced over.

“A dead body, that’s what homicide usually has,” Patch said. “Welcome to the real world, Diego. Your first official murder case. Meet my ex-partner, Detective, on administrative leave, under investigation, Herman Dallas.”

Diego looked down, then swallowed hard. He could smell the blood, and so he stopped breathing for a while. “Uh, how can you tell?” The corpse was missing its head, and hands from the wrist down, probably to prevent identification.

“Herman was my partner for three years,” Patch said. “Also, his wallet was still in his pocket. Not a robbery gone wrong. And--” She leaned down and pushed the edge of the blood soaked sleeve aside, showing off a few inches of wrist. There was a tattoo there, a little smiling cat and the words _We’re all Mad Here_.

“Well, I guess he won’t be getting away with whatever it was he was getting away with,” Diego said, and then he had to take a breath. He didn’t need air, not the way normal people did. Along with his kinetic control, he only had to breathe once every twenty minutes or so, but he did need air to talk. Inconvenient, the way soundwaves worked.

“He was still murdered,” Patch said. “And we still need to find out who did it, and more importantly, why.”

“Oh, is that all?” Klaus asked. He yawned, looked down at the body, shuddered. Klaus wasn’t well dressed, but that was hardly new. He had what looked like it had once been a garbage man’s coveralls, the top rolled down and tied around his waist, bright orange flip flops, and a sports bra for someone who actually had tits. And a Dr. Who scarf wrapped several times around his neck, the ends dangling in his hands. “He was killed by a guy named Caesar Blowski. Ha, Blowski, really? Well, no it’s very awful for you, I’m sure--”

“Who is this?”

“My brother,” Diego admitted. “Klaus, Detective Patch, my partner.”

“She used to be _the other guy’s_ partner, and this isn’t your fault, Detective Patch,” Klaus said, looking just to the left of Patch’s shoulder. “You’re a good cop.”

“Who the heck is Caesar Blowski?” Patch demanded. “He’s a civilian, Diego, get rid of him.”

“Come on--”

“No, really, he told me, I’ve been clean for a few days, and he’s really angry, so I didn’t even have to look for him very hard--”

“Come on, Klaus, I told you to wait in the car.”

“You know I can do this, right, Diego.” Klaus whined every step of the way back to the car.

“Watch your head,” Diego said.

“Look, this isn’t cops and robbers, it’s not wearing a mask, you know I can do this--”

“And I remember from the times with Dad that you can’t prove _my idiot junkie brother talks to dead people_ in court,” Diego said. “Just stay here, and I’ll buy you a pancake breakfast, okay, okay, little brother?”

“We are all the same age, _asshole_ ,” Klaus yelled as Diego pushed him into the backseat, shut the door, and locked it with the remote. He hadn’t engaged the child-safety locks on the back seat, but it was Klaus, and he might not actually try to get out. Klaus was like that, sometimes.

Still a child.

Still that thirteen year old child that Dad had locked in a fucking crypt until he stopped screaming.

Diego sighed. He didn’t want to feel sorry for Klaus. They all had their fucking trauma, didn’t they?

Time to grow up and deal with it.

***

“What are you doing?” Patch asked.

“Looking up a lead,” Diego said, pulling up the files. “I ran a check for priors on Blowski, did you know he’s a real person.”

“Hargreeves,” Patch said, exasperated.

“Yes, I’m here,” Klaus said, then cocked his head like he was listening to a voice. “You have the attention of all the Hargreeves in the room, Detective Patch.”

“Is he kidding?”

“He’s my brother,” Diego said, like that was an explanation. “So, no, he’s not kidding. Doesn’t mean anything. Klaus was never paying attention, even when he was supposed to be. To be honest, he’s kinda useless. Even Dad decided he wasn’t worth the effort to train.”

“I’m hurt,” Klaus said. “I’m hurt and dismayed and-- seriously, does no one else see the little girl throwing a temper tantrum in the bullpen?”

“You’re the only one, pal,” Diego said. “No, Eudora, look. Caesar Blowski, he’s not what you’d call a nice guy. Hey, Klaus, do you know anything about Blowski--”

“I know a lot about blow,” Klaus said. “You mean blow, as in snort, or blow, as in drop trou--”

“Oh, my god, Klaus, if you’re not going to say anything useful, shut up.”

“I could just want to spend time with my brother,” Klaus said, and again, he wasn’t looking at Diego. “No, the other-- yes, I have more than one brother, and you’re totally not my favorite.”

“Who’s your favorite?”

“Five.”

“Five’s gone,” Diego said.

“Yeah, that makes him my favorite. I like to think of him having some nice life, somewhere else, free of Dad. Free of Luthor. Free of all of us. Happy… maybe he’s got a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, maybe, I don’t judge, he didn’t judge me.”

“We were thirteen when he disappeared, Klaus. Even you hadn’t fucked up that badly at thirteen.”

“Brother, you have no idea who I fucked before I was thirteen years old,” Klaus said.

It took Diego a little longer than, perhaps, it should have, to realize that Patch had simply walked away, leaving the two of them to argue about Klaus’s sexual proclivities, which, based on the bored looks from those on the floor, were not as shocking as they should be.

“Eudora--” Diego ran after her, and Klaus ran after him, flailing and spinning his scarf around in one hand, looking like the world’s most fabulous drunken cowboy.

“Seriously, don’t call me that,” Patch said when they caught up with her. “Diego, if you’re going to be useful, come with me to interview a neighbor, said she heard something last night.”

“That poor kid,” Klaus said, looking back over his shoulder, and then-- “Can we get donuts on the way? Griddy’s is right near where we’re headed. Cops like donuts, don’t they? Besides, tummy’s a rumblin’.”

“Hargreeves, shut him up,” Patch snapped.

Diego blew out of mouthful of air. “Hate to say it, but that’s probably not possible. Klaus’ll still be talking when he’s dead.”

“You have no idea,” Klaus said agan, mournfully.

They were in the car, Klaus hanging out in the back. That was the trouble with Klaus, Diego decided. He never actually listened to anyone; always just doing what he wanted to anyway. Family trait, Diego decided. Luther was big on not following orders, but man, did the guy love giving them out.

Patch drove in silence for a while, and then sighed. “What did you find out about Blowski?”

Diego beamed, his cheeks stretching in a smile.

“No commentary, and I don’t want to talk about the fact that we’re talking about it,” she said, giving him her famous _talk to the hand_ gesture. “Just… give me something to work with.”

“We could comb for witnesses,” Diego said. “Guy’s distinctive, he’s got a lock of white hair from where he was hit in the head with a brick during a breaking and entering gone wrong. He did a nickel for that, up north. Made some contacts. He’s been arrested half a dozen times since then, but nothing’s stuck. He has powerful friends, now.”

Patch pressed her lips tight, trying not to smile. “All right,” she said. “We’ll see if we can find anyone who can verify that he was in the area, and then we’ll look for him. That’s the most I can promise.”

“Hot damn, donuts,” Klaus piped up from the backseat, pointing to Griddy’s out the window, then whining softly as Patch just kept driving.

Diego settled into his seat, not even bothering to hide his smirk. This was going to work. It _was_.

***

“This is _never_ going to work,” Diego complained. They’d turned the crime scene upside down, they’d talked to every neighbor, dog walker, hooker, and homeless dude in a two block radius around the scene, and no one they talked to had seen, heard, or done anything unusual.

Like, how did anyone miss a guy getting killed, and then _beheaded_? You’d think someone would notice something like that.

“Hey, I’ve made like three friends, and Sammie down the block gave me a half a pack of cigarettes. He said I look like a homeless person,” Klaus remarked.

“You do look like a homeless person,” Diego commented. At least Klaus had changed his clothes, although Diego wasn’t quite sure where he’d gotten baby blue sweatpants that said JUICY on the ass with sequins. He was positive that the shirt Klaus was wearing, which was from the gym where Diego rented out his room, was his. He was also pretty sure that it wasn’t clean. And boots that weren’t tied, but that was par for the course with his brother. Diego wasn’t sure that Klaus even knew how to tie his shoes.

“Well, I don’t know, maybe he wasn’t killed here,” Klaus suggested. “I mean, they could have moved the body. Like a drive through window.”

“Do I even want to know what the connection is there?”

Klaus wasn’t looking at him at all.

“Are you high?”

“As a kite,” Klaus said, easily. “So, no talky talky for today. Just a couple of sad old dead guys-- no, no, sorry, you were twenty-three, that’s not fair. I’m old? You think I’m old? You’re the one who’s old…”

Diego growled. “So, if they killed him somewhere else, how’d they get him here without leaving a blood trail? Trash-- Hey, Eudora, has the trash gone out yet, since the murder?”

“Uh, no, why?”

“I think they might have moved the body,” Diego said. “If so, there might be evidence in the trash, bloody blankets or trashbags or paint tarps or something like that.”

“You want me to climb into a dumpster? In these shoes?”

“No, I’ll do it-- Klaus can help.”

“Klaus cannot help,” Patch said. “That man is a walking biological contaminant.”

***

“Here.” Patch was quick, no doubt about it. Diego found the bags used to move the body, and the promptly started heaving. Somewhere out of that satchel of hers, she found a plastic grocery bag for him to puke into and a handful of kleenex to wipe his mouth with.

Diego had seen a lot in his life, including his brother Ben go full on monster on people, and still, it gave him snakeguts to watch the way people could be so horrifically exposed, skin torn, bones broken. Somehow, even though he’d never met this man, and the man wasn’t, as Patch insisted, a good person, seeing the remains of his body, thrown away in the trash, was just horrifying.

Dad would have been ashamed of him, if Diego had ever bothered to talk to him, about anything. If Dad had ever managed to have an actual feeling in his entire life, for that matter.

Mom would have understood, though. Well, as much as she understood anything these days. She didn’t need to understand, though. She would have let Diego sit on the floor by her knee and run a soft hand through his hair. “Go ahead, get it out, darling,” she would say.

Diego puked into the bag again.

“I know it’s not your first time seein’ a dead body, Hargreeves,” one of the beat cops yelled, like he saw it everyday and it didn’t affect him. Diego thought maybe that was worse.

“Ignore him, he’s an ass,” Patch said. She was patting him on the shoulder, which was more jarring than soothing, but he appreciated the effort nonetheless.

“He’s just mad because all three of my brain cells are working,” Diego muttered.

“Self burn, ow, those are _rare_ ,” Klaus piped up. “Well, no, obviously not with Diego, he seems to excel at them. Lots of practice.” He was nodding as if he knew something.

“What are you even doing here?” Patch asked him.

Diego climbed out of the dumpster with at least a little of his dignity intact, and then promptly slipped in a pile of strewn garbage. He didn’t fall, though, so that counted for something. He just wanted to go home and take an eight hour shower.

“Maybe I just… wanted… to spent time… with my brother,” Klaus said, doing that not-quite-fake weepy shit that he did sometimes. “Not _you_.”

“Whatever,” Patch said. “Can you drive?”

“Badly,” Klaus agreed.

“Great. Take Diego home and get him cleaned up and fed,” Patch said. “I’m going to the lab. He can meet up with me later.”

“Awww, you do care,” Klaus said. “She cares about you, Diego, isn’t that sweet?”

“I don’t want him stinking up my car,” Patch clarified.

***

“So, uh, Freddie wants to know when you’re going to get with the bad guy catching,” Klaus said. He looked terrible, which wasn’t surprising. He’d crashed at Diego’s place and Diego kept waking up with nightmares.

Also, he hadn’t been able to score a hit of drugs, either, and white wine, which Diego kept in the fridge for special occasions, just didn’t cut it. So, Klaus was both hung over and suffering from withdrawal. His hair was standing up in fourteen different directions all at once, and Diego was pretty sure there was a wad of bubblegum in it.

Not that Diego was going to do anything more than drag Klaus back home and let Mom scrub out the gum with a handful of peanut butter. But maybe they could get breakfast while they were there. “Come on, let’s go home,” Diego said.

“This… this isn’t home to you, brother?” Klaus said in his mystical, I-am-so-sad-for-you voice.

“You know what I mean. Who’s Freddie?”

“The dead guy,” Klaus said. “We’re not going to talk to Dad, are we? I don’t want to talk to Dad.”

“Nah, if we go in the kitchen door, Dad won’t even notice we’re in the house. Pogo might say something to him about it later, but we’ll already be gone by then.”

“Let’s go home, then,” Klaus agreed.

“So, you’ve got a dead guy, today? How lovely for you.”

“You have no idea. He’s pretty grouchy.”

“Well, he can just be grouchy. Or move on to the afterlife, we have more important things to do than worry about some random dead guy.”

“Good morning, Diego, Klaus,” Mom said, when they arrived at the kitchen, a little past nine in the morning. She was bright and cheerful, like she always was, dressed in the same fifties fashion that she’d always had since Diego was four or five. “It’s good to see you boys. Are you hungry?”

He vaguely remembered there had been other nannies and nurses before then, but he’d never particularly cared about them. Mom had been the only one to show an actual interest in any of the kids that Dad adopted.

“Always,” Diego said, brushing a kiss against her cheek.

“Sit down, then, I’ll make you breakfast,” Mom said. She was already wearing her apron, and had a spatula in her pocket. There were a lot of things Reginald Hargreeves got wrong in his life, or screwed up, but Mom wasn’t one of those things.

“Have you come to visit?” Mom asked, putting the fried eggs and bacon, done up in her typical smilie face fashion, on a plate in front of Diego. “I can get your rooms aired out.”

“We’re here to see you, Mom,” Diego explained gently. “We moved out, remember?”

“Yes, of course, dear. Your father will be very happy to see you.”

“How is it, after so many years, you can continue to tell the same damn lie?”

“Language, Klaus,” Mom said, her smile not dimming an iota. “You know I don’t like cursing at the breakfast table. And you have gum in your hair. Let me get the peanut butter.”

“Seriously,” Klaus said. “Do you think he makes her say all those things? Your father is a great man, your father is very busy, Klaus.”

“L-Leave her alone,” Diego said, kicking Klaus under the table.

“We didn’t even have names until she gave them to us,” Klaus complained, shoveling eggs onto his toast, and then stuffing the entire piece of toast in his mouth at once.

“Which is why you should b-be nice to her,” Diego said. “She’s our _mom_.”

“She’s a ro--”

Diego had a knife in his hand before Klaus finished the first syllable. “Do not. Say that.”

“Klaus, sink, please, darling,” Mom said, coming back out of the pantry. “Diego, don’t throw knives at your brother, you know better.”

“‘Course not, Mom,” Diego said, sliding the blade back in its sheath.

Klaus smelled like one of Five’s favorite sandwiches (Peanut butter and marshmallow) by the time he was back in Diego’s car, hair gum-free.

He’d also liberated a sparkly purple scarf from somewhere and kept flipping the ends against Diego’s neck. “Well, that was fun,” he said. “Can we go deal with the slightly nicer dead people. All the dead ladies at home were givin’ me the stink eye.”

“ _What_ dead ladies at home?”

Klaus shrugged. “I try not to ask, brother.”

***

There weren’t any leads; they couldn’t find a trace of a hint of connection between Patch’s old partner, Dallas, and Blowski. They couldn’t find evidence that Blowski had moved the body, and without knowing where the body came from, they couldn’t comb that area for evidence.

And what was worse, the guys at the precinct were starting to give Patch an evil glare. Maybe Patch was the one covering up the death of a fellow cop. And if she was doing that, why.

“Come on, Klaus,” Diego said, finally, exasperated. “Get off the damn drugs for a day, and tell us something. Give us something to go on. Why would this Blowski guy kill Dallas?”

Klaus, who was in the process of rolling a cigarette -- or at least, Diego thought it was, hoped it was, a cigarette -- blinked at him. “Who’s Dallas?”

“Herman Dallas, the murdered guy that Blowski killed?” Diego only barely kept from yelling at Klaus by clenching his fists tight together. This was his first case, he didn’t want to go down at the precinct as having fucked up his first case.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Klaus said. He licked the cigarette paper and then held the sloppy smoke to his mouth. “You got a light?”

“Why would I have a lighter? I don’t smoke?”

“I don’t know, you seem kinda the meditation guy and you might have smelly incense or something.”

“Do you even know me?”

“No,” Klaus confessed. “Dad did his best to make sure we didn’t have any outside interests. _Crime fighting family, you’re all related, now deal with it, Klaus! No, you can’t have a teddy bear, why would you need a teddy bear. I can get a real bear, if you want to fight one_.”

“You know, it’s creepy how you sound just like him,” Diego said. “I don’t suppose I can get you a pizza as a bribe or something?”

“Honestly, I’m just as glad none of us are actually descended from him, I would look so, so bad with Dad’s nose. Pizza would be great. Ben doesn’t like olives.”

“Ben’s dead,” Diego said, bowing his head for just a moment.

“Yeah, so?” Klaus said. “What are we bribing me for, again?”

“To figure out why Blowski killed Herman Dallas,” Diego roared.

“Uh, he didn’t,” Klaus said.

“You said he did, what have we been looking into--”

“Blowski killed the dead guy,” Klaus said. “Who is not this Herman Dallas guy. His name is Freddie Lucas.”

“What?”

“The dead guy, got his head cut off? Name’s Freddie.”

“God, I could kiss you,” Diego burst out.

“Before or after I get pizza?”

***

“What are we looking for?” Patch leaned over the corpse. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

“You said the tattoo--” Diego plucked the guy’s wrist, holding his breath. If he could keep his talking limited, he might get out of the morgue before he had to smell anything. He turned the guy’s wrist and examined the end of the tattoo carefully. “It’s new.”

“What?” Patch exclaimed, pulling out a magnifying glass to look it over carefully.

“The ink’s still fresh, but there’s no bruising. Probably did it after the guy died. Herman Dallas is still alive. This guy was meant to make us think he was dead.”

Patch glanced up at him, her eyes framed by thick lashes. “You’re _incredible_ , Hargreeves,” she said. “I thought you were just bullshitting me the whole time, but you could… you might actually be a decent detective.”

“We still haven’t found the murderer,” Diego pointed out. “Or Dallas, for that matter. I don’t know that _anything’s_ been solved.”

“I’m trying to compliment you,” Patch said. “Say _thank you_ and shut up.”

“Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of fun with this story. Consider this piece the first episode of a tv show. I may write more of it, depending on how reception goes, and if/when the muse strikes me.


End file.
